The Tunisian novelist Abbas Suleiman traces a difficult journey through the maze of forgetting
Tunisian fiction is among the most prominent Arab literary traditions concerned with portraying human and social realities. Tunisian novelists have consistently placed the individual at the center of their narratives, revealing human suffering and psychological and social transformations across diverse settings. Their works often explore questions of identity and the complex relationship between the individual and society, employing narrative techniques that reflect the depth of human experience and the details of everyday life. Particular attention has also been given to marginalized characters living in states of displacement and uncertainty, lending Tunisian fiction a distinctive human and realistic dimension.
اضافة اعلان
Within this context comes “Hamouda’s Final Days,” a novel that presents a deeply human portrait of Hamouda, an elderly man who finds himself wandering through a journey of confusion and displacement across various places, experiencing situations that expose the fragility of human existence and the loneliness of confronting life.
Manifestations of Wandering
The theme of disorientation is embodied through Hamouda, who suffers from memory impairment and Alzheimer’s disease, leaving him in a constant state of confusion and loss of awareness. He moves from one place to another without fully understanding his actions or the purpose behind them, driven by an eroding memory no longer capable of preserving the details of his life or connecting him to reality. Thus, wandering becomes more than a psychological condition—it evolves into an existential experience affecting both body and consciousness.
As the novel states:
“He left like a gust of air. He did not turn toward the voice calling after him, for the street’s clamor drowned out all other sounds. Then he crossed a long alley remembered only by his feet. The alley ended at a taxi station, a wide station located only a few hundred meters from his home.” (p. 10)
Hamouda moves without a clear purpose, driven by a deteriorating memory that has robbed him of the ability to distinguish between places and people. He seems to inhabit a mysterious world whose features he no longer recognizes, moving from one space to another without understanding what he is doing or why he is there.
The author portrays Hamouda as a lost figure disconnected from both the world and himself, unable to recall the details of his life or comprehend what is happening around him. This leaves him trapped in profound psychological isolation:
“Hamouda stared at the faces one by one, searching for a face that could connect him to what remained of his memory. He wished he recognized one of them. He looked again and again but found nothing: no eyes resembling his father’s, no face reminding him of his uncles, no features that carried his mother’s presence. Even the bodies seemed strange, as though his exhausted mind possessed not a single image to anchor them.” (p. 56)
Wandering thus becomes part of his inner makeup. It is not merely a matter of being lost in physical space but also a loss of consciousness, identity, and memory. Hamouda emerges as a deeply troubled human figure, embodying the vulnerability of a person who has lost his memory and his grasp on the truths of his life.
Spatial disorientation appears through his constant movement between places that now seem unfamiliar and fragmented. The setting itself reflects the collapse of memory and the fragmentation of perception, making Hamouda feel like a stranger in places he once knew.
Psychological disorientation is equally evident in the anxiety and confusion that accompany his inability to understand what is happening around him. The loss of memory traps him in a struggle between the remnants of the past and the haze of the present, intensifying his feelings of loneliness and separation from the world:
“The word ‘identity card’ passed him like sound against a deaf stone. He did not catch the whole phrase, only the word identity. Something stirred in his chest: What identity? Where is it kept? From which pocket does it emerge? He kept crying—not because he chose to cry, but because tears were the last document left to him after his name had vanished.” (p. 96)
Unable to comprehend either his surroundings or his own condition, Hamouda is overwhelmed by helplessness and defeat. He oscillates between faint moments of recollection and complete forgetfulness, losing his ability to communicate naturally with reality. This psychological turmoil confines him within a deep internal isolation, moving through life with a present body but a fractured consciousness. He becomes a prisoner of a memory that is gradually fading away, giving the character a profoundly moving human dimension that reveals the tragedy of human vulnerability before the disintegration of awareness and selfhood.
The Human Dimension
The novel’s human dimension is embodied in Hamouda’s profound suffering as his memory fragments and his ability to perceive the world steadily diminishes. The author presents him as a fragile human being confronting illness and helplessness in painful silence.
Hamouda’s life becomes a difficult journey through the labyrinth of forgetting, a search for himself and for the remnants of his past slipping away beyond recovery. Through this character, the novel reveals the psychological pain that accompanies the loss of connection to place, people, and memory.
His weakness is a defining aspect of his humanity. No longer capable of protecting himself or understanding what is happening around him, he lives in a constant state of confusion, anxiety, and fear. The author skillfully portrays this suffering in a way that allows readers to feel the depth of the tragedy that unfolds when memory collapses and the past becomes a scattered image beyond one’s grasp.
The character also reflects humanity’s enduring need for security and belonging. Hamouda is not merely searching for a place to go; unconsciously, he is searching for meaning, for something that can reconnect him to life and alleviate his inner estrangement.
Through this experience, the novel offers a poignant portrayal of old age, loneliness, and brokenness. Hamouda becomes a model of a person gradually consumed by isolation, unable to communicate with others or maintain psychological and social balance. The author gives the character a depth that transcends individual experience and speaks to a universal human tragedy, exposing the fragility of human beings in the face of illness, time, and life’s transformations.
Hamouda carries within him deep fractures, deferred dreams, and an ongoing struggle against an increasingly harsh reality. He is weighed down by experiences that have shaped his psychological fragility and darkened his view of the world, moving through the narrative while trying to cling to whatever meaning remains amid life’s relentless changes.
Conclusion
Abbas Suleiman’s “Hamouda’s Final Days” stands as a profoundly human novel that exposes the tragedy of human vulnerability before the fragility of memory and the cruelty of time. Through Hamouda, the author creates a vivid representation of psychological and existential loss. He successfully depicts the suffering that arises when a person loses connection to places, faces, and memories, becoming trapped in a disordered world where reality and illusion merge and the past dissolves into fragments beyond the reach of consciousness.
The novel also reveals the painful isolation experienced when awareness deteriorates and one’s ability to connect with the world weakens, turning life into a succession of increasingly meaningless moments. Suleiman grants the character remarkable psychological depth, allowing readers to feel the magnitude of the inner pain caused by memory loss. Hamouda is not merely a character afflicted with a medical condition; he is the embodiment of a human being exhausted by time and stripped of psychological, social, and existential balance.
Using a reflective language and precise descriptive narration, the author conveys the full tension, sadness, and anxiety of the human experience. The novel becomes a space for revealing human fragility before harsh transformations that can rob individuals of memory, identity, and their sense of life itself. In this way, the work achieves both artistic and intellectual significance, transcending the boundaries of an individual story to express a universal human fear of loss, forgetting, and loneliness.
— Ilham Belhaj, Algerian writer
